the day after

I remember Christmases past when on Christmas morning you could barely see the tree for all the mountains of gifts piled in front of it. I think back on those as the years of excess... when things were so important because the important things were so lacking. I cannot say it was anybody's fault... the culture contributed, major dysfunction in the family, never having conversations that went below the shallow how-are-you-I-am-fine variety. To have those conversations would have been dangerous at best. To invite the kind of vulnerability required to go deeper was just not safe where we lived. We did what we could...

I spoke with both of my sons yesterday evening... after all the hustle and bustle of our busy day here. Although I had just seen both of them earlier in the month, that had been an odd get-together because it centered around my life profession. My birthday was the week afterwards and my sisters went overboard to give me a lovely party... almost as if they suspected my kids might forget. They did.

My older son lives in a time zone three hours earlier, so his hustle and bustle still revolved around dinner. The other had a million in-laws in the house, so our conversation was mostly drowned out and peppered with other conversations with the people around him. I was placed on hold a few times during both conversations and wondered briefly why I had even called at all.

But I knew. I called... to hear their voices... to engage. To remind them that although I am a nun, I am still their mother... and that I still love them. I cannot pile up presents to the ceiling to show that love, and even if I could, I wouldn't do it anymore anyway. It was an illusion, like so much of our culture's approach to life. We have forgotten we are in fact okay. Just as we are. Flawed, yes. God knows why.

That is part of the mystery we can't come to terms with. It kills us to imagine a perfect God who could/would create an imperfect world. Because we equate perfect with good. And... we can't imagine an imperfect God. Why not? Explain to me exactly why God has to be perfect.